Now, a set of three case reports in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that some cases of the alleged condition are actually cancers. One turned out to be a pituitary tumor, another -- in a man who lived in an area where Lyme disease was quite rare -- a stage IV mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma, and a third was a lung tumor.

As the authors conclude: "We are not suggesting that every patient with nonspecific symptoms, such as fatigue, joint pain, or abdominal pain, should be aggressively evaluated for cancer. Rather, we present these cases to demonstrate delays in diagnosis that come from assuming that patients have chronic Lyme disease."

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